7-13. Homeward.

Worf's human brother, Nikolai (Paul Sorvino),
violates the Prime Directive.

THE PLOT

The planet Boraal II is dying.  Its atmosphere is tearing itself apart through the phenomenon of "atmospheric dissipation," manifesting as fierce storms that will leave the planet uninhabitable within hours. The Enterprise has not come to save this world or its people. The planet is beyond saving, and as a pre-warp civilization, any interference would be a violation of the Prime Directive. They are just here to rescue Worf's foster brother, Nikolai Rozhenko (Paul Sorvino), a Federation scientist assigned to observe the planet.

Worf beams down to some caves near Nikolai's outpost and does find him - along with several Boraalans Nikolai has rescued. Worf is appalled, as is Picard, both decrying this violation of the Prime Directive. Picard allows Nikolai to upload his data to the Enterprise computers, but states that he will not compound this violation of the rules with one of his own. The survivors are doomed.

Nikolai will not accept this, and uses the cover of the storms to camouflage beaming the Boraalans into a holodeck simulation that looks exactly like their caves. By the time Picard finds out, it's too late to return them to their planet. Picard is left with no choice but to go along with Nikolai's plan: Use the holodeck to convince the survivors that they are being led to another part of the same planet, while the Enterprise races to an uninhabited world that will act as their new home.

But the storms have left the holodeck systems damaged, leaving Nikolai and Worf to cover for various glitches as best they can... and hope that the ship reaches the new world before the holodeck fails entirely!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: As the planet Boraal dies, Picard steps forward to make a small speech about honoring the ramifications of the Prime Directive. When confronted with the news that Nikolai actually beamed survivors aboard the holodeck, he is furious - but he doesn't entertain any notion of returning them to their dead world to perish with it. As with Pen Pals, when confronted with living people, he becomes a touch more flexible. He endorses Nikolai's plan as their only option, and does all he can to make it successful. Patrick Stewart does his usual sterling job, but "Prime Directive" Picard is probably my least favorite version of the character.

Worf: Has clashed with Nikolai ever since they were children. Worf has always been the responsible one, prizing self-discipline and duty, while Nikolai would take rash and impulsive actions with no thought for the consequences. "Wherever you go, you create chaos," he growls to his brother. "How many times did our parents lie awake at night, wondering what kind of trouble you were in?" When Dobara (Penny Johnson), Nikolai's Boraalan wife, questions Worf about their clashes, he simply says that "it is an old argument." His anger at Nikolai does not extend to the Boraalans, however, and Worf shows respect for them at every turn.

Data: Though this is not a big Data episode, he gets one very good scene. When he and Dr. Crusher review their options for a new Boraalan planet, Crusher agonizes over the consequences of making the wrong choice. She observes that they can't know what factors may cause things to go wrong - unwittingly echoing the regular Prime Directive defense that if an individual life is saved against the rules, then there is no telling what consequences may ensue. Data's response is all the more perfectly-judged for being totally logical and emotionless, and is an unwitting defense of Nikolai's actions: "I do not believe we can offer any guarantees. We can simply make the best choice we have at the moment."

Guest Star of the Week: "I wasn't going to let those people die just because your captain started quoting Federation dogma to me... I refuse to be bound by an abstraction. The lives of the people of Boraal are far more important to me." When he snaps this at Worf, my response is to applaud - Can we beam him over to Voyager to give the same little speech to Janeway, please? Paul Sorvino's a terrific actor with enormous presence, and he's always been able to balance that presence with an ability to share the screen with others. He and Michael Dorn do a lot to make the fairly hackneyed sibling rivalry between Worf and Nikolai feel somewhat real, which helps keep this episode watchable.


THOUGHTS

Anytime the words, "Prime Directive" are uttered in a TNG episode, you know that Picard is about to get unbearably self-righteous. The first 15 minutes or so of Homeward are so bad that I would have switched off if not for the sake of these reviews. In the TOS days, Kirk and company violated the Prime Directive for all sorts of reasons, ranging from a society being static to, yes, a society being doomed to imminent extinction... Which makes it all the more ridiculous when latter-day Trek captains proclaim that doing nothing while planets die is somehow a moral choice.

What saves the episode from being as bad as Force of Nature is that the Prime Directive arguments are dropped by about 20 minutes in. By midway through the episode, the only residue of this poor start is a weak "B" plot involving Vorin (Brian Markinson), the Boraalan chronicler, who inadverdantly finds his way onto the main ship and suffers a massive case of culture shock. 

The ending tries to show that Vorin's plight wouldn't have happened had Nikolai not violated the Prime Directive... but honestly, Vorin's plight seems a small price to pay for many of his people surviving, so Picard's attempt at moralizing falls rather flat. The way the episode plays out, Nikolai is right and Picard and Worf are wrong - and while this isn't harped on (1990's Trek never questions the sanctity of the Prime Directive), Worf is shown acknowledging as much in the final scenes.

What keeps the entire episode from falling flat is that the "A" plot shifts narrative gears to a combination of three types of story: quest narrative, as Worf and Nikolai lead the survivors on a holodeck journey; race against time, as the ship flies at maximum warp to the Boraalans' new world before the holodeck fails because of Technobabble; and an examination of the life-long sibling rivalry between Worf and Nikolai. 

I admit to finding some cleverness in the use of the holodeck to persuade the Boraalans that they never left home even when transplanted to a new planet, but I'll also acknowledge that none of these three strands is original. All of them are competently played, however, making the second half of the episode fairly entertaining. 

The end result is that an episode that starts out looking like another Season 7 disaster ends up being a fairly average TNG episode. Not a must-see, by any means... but not an unpleasant time-filler, once you get past its dreadful first Act.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Episode: The Pegasus
Next Episode: Sub Rosa


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5-17. The Outcast

Riker begins a forbidden relationship.

THE PLOT

The Enterprise assists the J'naii, an androgynous spacefaring race. The J'naii have no males or females. They also apparently have no contractions, as they all deliver their lines like knockoffs of Data. If a viewer tuned in just after Picard's opening voice-over, that viewer could be forgiven for thinking that the visitors on the Enterprise were a race of androids!

Anyway, the J'naii have lost a shuttlecraft in what appears to be a pocket of "null space."  This pocket sucks in any form of energy, making it impossible to detect from outside. Riker teams with Soren (Melinda Culea), a J'naii pilot and scientist, to take a modified Starfleet shuttle on a rescue mission. But when Riker develops feelings for Soren, this joint venture threatens to create an incident - for if Soren chooses to act as a female, then she will be shunned by her own society...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: A glorified extra in this episode, though he does invoke the Prime Directive in order to create some Artificial Tension for Riker at the end.

Riker: Soren comes from a race with no gender. Apparently, to Riker this just represents a challenge to be overcome, since he's all but hitting on Soren from their very first scene together. "What kind of woman do you like?" Soren asks Riker early in the episode. I shout back, "Breathing," as evidence from the past 116 episodes indicates that Riker's standards extend no further than that.

Worf: As predicted, he has fully recovered from his crippling spinal injury, and is up to participating in a tension-free rescue mission with Riker at the end. We also see him doing his best Archie Bunker impersonation for the poker game scene. Here, Worf becomes the voice of bigotry, grumbling about poker with wild cards being "a woman's game" and talking about how the J'naii "bother" him. I'm surprised they don't really hammer it home by having Worf add that he has no problem with the J'naii existing, but that they shouldn't flaunt their androgyny around others.

Hot Alien Space Androgyn of the Week: No males, no females. But of course, the J'naii who attracts Riker's eye is played by the very female, very attractive Melinda Culea. No attempt is made to disguise her obvious feminity, meaning that all of Riker's scenes with her read strictly as "man and woman." Then we discover that Soren actually is female, which allows writer Jeri Taylor to make text the homosexual subtext by making the J'naii race one that brutally represses gender - which also completely nullifies the entire concept of putting Riker into a relationship with somebody genderless.  From this point on, Soren is just another space babe for Riker to notch onto his ever-expanding belt.


THOUGHTS

I'm going to start by trying to emphasize the positive. I can think of two good things to say about The Outcast: (1) I've seen worse episodes of Star Trek. I can count them on my fingers, but they're there; and (2) I believe the intentions behind this episode were good.

That said, this is a Jeri Taylor script, so you're pretty safe in betting that everything will be presented simplistically and melodramatically. Even in (heck, long before) the 1980's, there existed gay rights movements, which were supported by many heterosexuals. J'naii society, however, is utterly monolithic in its discrimination against the "gendered," with no evidence given that even a single "non-gendered" J'naii would support the idea of rights for those like Soren. This... is really not believable, reducing our Guest Race of the Week into a race where personality and individuality appear to have been eliminated along with gender.

It would have been far more interesting to have had Soren be truly androgynous, and to have had the other J'naii react to the alienness of her relationship with Riker. But then they might have to put Riker into a relationship with someone less obviously (and by the midpoint, spelled out in the text as) female, which I suspect was not a risk that early 1990's Star Trek was prepared to take, not even for one episode.

The plot involving the shuttle lost in "Null Space" is perfunctory, with most of its complications existing just to put Riker and Soren together in close quarters. As is typical of bad TNG, there is no sense of threat. Despite the opening of the episode providing a strict time limit to rescue the lost J'naii, there is no urgency to the efforts to locate them, no sense that this subplot actually matters to the characters at all.

Worst, of all, with a heavy-handed and uncourageous "message" plot and a perfunctory "rescue" subplot, the episode commits what I consider to be the cardinal sin of any television show or movie: It's boring. The dullest TNG episode since Loud as a Whisper.


Overall Rating: 1/10.

Previous Episode: Ethics
Next Episode: Cause and Effect

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5-13. The Masterpiece Society

Troi gets a little too close to the leader of an endgangered colony.

THE PLOT

Tracking the path of a stellar fragment, the Enterprise discovers a hidden human colony that will be wiped out when the fragment passes. Contact is successfully made with Aron Conor (John Snyder), the colony's friendly leader, and an Away Team is beamed down to investigate whether any alternative exists to evacuation.

The Away Team learns that this is a genetically engineered society, created generations earlier by Earth scientists who wanted to prove that they could create a paradise society. It is not only the colonists who have been engineered. Everything within the dome of the colony has been engineered into a single, perfectly-balanced eco-system. For the colonists, this means that simply leaving is not an option.

Geordi works with Hannah Bates (Dey Young), the colony's top scientist, to find a solution. But with colonists beginning to see the possibilities of life outside the dome, the stellar fragment may not be the only threat to this society's continued existence...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Voices his disapproval of genetic engineering. He feels that much of what the colony has bred out - uncertainty, self-discovery, finding and testing one's own limitations - are the very things that he feels makes a human life worth living. He tries to respect the colony's desire to avoid contamination, limiting contact to only those personnel necessary to rescue the colonists from destruction. Even so, at the end he seems to wonder whether the Enterprise has done the right thing... though given that the alternative was the total annihilation of this colony, I honestly find that a bit hard to swallow!

Geordi: Has a more personal reason than Picard for opposing genetic engineering. As he points out to Hannah, the colony would never have allowed his birth. As such, he draws great satisfaction from the irony of the colony's salvation resting with technology created for "a visor for a blind man," technology that would never have been needed on the colony it's saving.

Troi: She quickly bonds with Aron, and spends a lot of time with him at the colony, trying to help him through the difficult decisions the Enterprise's arrival has forced on him. She is strongly attracted to him from the first, an attraction she gives into during a vulnerable moment. Then, when colony members begin requesting asylum aboard Enterprise, she faces a difficult decision of her own: Telling Picard about her breach of professionalism.

Hot Genetically-Engineered Babe of the Week: Hannah (Dey Young), the colony's top scientist, is instantly curious about the starship and eager to beam up to work with Geordi. But once she sees the technology aboard the Enterprise, she is amazed. She feels as if her entire society has been kept in the Dark Ages due to a generations-old "cosmic joke." She is less than happy at the prospect of simply returning to her life as it has been, and searches for a way - any way - to avoid staying behind.

Pompous Genetically-Engineered Bureaucrat of the Week: Martin Benbeck (Ron Canada) is "the interpreter of the founders' wishes." As such, he is by definition a fundamentalist, insisting on a religious adherence to the colony's perfect balance. He opposes allowing the Enterprise Away Team to beam in, and even more fervently opposes allowing Hannah to beam up to work with Geordi. Aron appears to pay him only cursory attention, shooting down his fundamentalism with the cool logic that the founders "probably didn't intend for us to die." Though the ending attempts to justify Martin's position, he really just comes across as a cartoon. His "better dead than contaminated by outside influences" position seems just as laughable at the end as at the beginning, no matter how much hand-wringing Picard does.


THOUGHTS

The Masterpiece Society is a solid, well-crafted piece. It's a good-looking episode, with careful and almost classical shot selection within the colony. The set design for the colony is very well-judged, and it's not surprising that this same set would be reused multiple times for future Trek series. The model shots are also well above-average, with the introductory shot of the dome on this desolate world of dust a particularly strong visual. Boasting an intelligent script, co-written by Michael Piller, this is a success on an intellectual level. It's almost the dramatic equivalent of chamber music.

And like chamber music, while it may be elegant and pleasant and easy to appreciate, it's also just the tiniest bit boring.

I actually like The Masterpiece Society, as far as it goes. It's just so very clear, so very quickly, exactly where this episode is heading. It's enjoyable enough, which makes it far better than three of the last four episodes, but there are no surprises. We know as soon as Hannah beams aboard that she's going to want to stay. We know as soon as she and Geordi start talking about his visor that the visor will be the key to solving the technological problem. We know as soon as Troi and Aron start talking that they're going to end up having a Doomed Romance (TM). It's ironic that, in an episode that sees Picard complaining about people living lives that have already been mapped out for them, that the episode itself plays out as something that's already been mapped out.

There's a lack of subtlety to many of the touches. The entire character of Martin Benbeck is unnecessary. The episode would work perfectly fine without him, simply by allowing Aron to more calmly voice some of the reservations that sound so irrational coming from Martin. Ron Canada's not a bad television character actor, but he comes across poorly here - and how could he not, given that Martin is a one-dimensional cartoon? Add in three different bits in which Geordi points out that he would never have been born in the colony's "perfect society" and a finale in which Picard invokes Its Holiness, The Prime Directive, and the whole episode feels much more didactic than in needs to.

Still, it is enjoyable, with Winrich Kolbe's direction really bringing a sense of elegance to the colony scenes. These "Prime Directive" episodes (a category of Trek that this show just about fits with) tend to be among my least favorites. But thanks to some good acting by Dey Young and John Snyder and some terrific effects work, this is an above-average example of a type of Trek show that I'm admittedly not much interested in.


Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Episode: Violations

Next Episode: Conundrum

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3-4. Who Watches the Watchers?

THE PLOT

Mintaka III is home to a pre-Warp civilization whose evolution closely parallels that of Vulcan. It is also home to an anthropological field team, studying the Mintakans. The base, which is holographically camouflaged to look like part of a mountain, is having trouble with its reactor. Enterprise rushes to the site to perform repairs. But it arrives too late, and the reactor blows, exposing the base to a Liko (Ray Wise), a Mintakan man, and his young daughter.

Liko is injured by the base's equipment and falls down the mountain, where he lays dying. Dr. Crusher requests emergency beam-up to save him... and opens a major new can of worms. Liko regains consciousness just long enough to see a room of wonders. When he is returned to his people, he tells them that all of their ancestors' superstitions were true, and that they are being watched from above by a god known as "The Picard."

If that's all there was to it, Liko would probably just be dismissed as a crank by the other Mintakans. Then Palmer, the missing member of the field team, is brought into the village - and the results may well push the Mintakans back into a superstition-filled Dark Age!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Picard's faith in the Prime Directive is resilient. When first confronted with Dr. Crusher's actions, he demands to know why she didn't just let Liko die. He resists Dr. Barron's suggestion at intervening as a deity, and tries to find a way to limit the cultural contamination by reasoning with the Mintakans' leader, Nuria (Kathryn Leigh Scott). Patrick Stewart is splendid throughout, and gets some excellent scenes, particularly near the end.

Riker: Comes up with the plan to rescue Palmer and investigate the extent of the contamination. He does fairly well at acting as a voice of reason against Liko.  His quiet persuasiveness may well have worked to marginalize Liko's claims, if not for Palmer's discovery.

Troi: Does some quick thinking to distract the Mintakans while Riker rescues Palmer. After that, she is basically thrust into the "damsel-in-distress" role, but she still maintains her composure.  She even provides vital help to Data in isolating Nuria from the other Mintakans. Though it admittedly isn't saying much, this is one of Troi's better episodes, and Marina Sirtis is on good form here.

Dr. Crusher: The interactions between Picard and Crusher at the beginning of this episode recall their conflicts in Symbiosis. Dr. Crusher sees Liko is hurt, and her sense of morality and duty as a doctor insists that she help him. Picard considers the Prime DIrective to be of greater value than one individual's life. Given that Picard spends an entire episode papering over the damage done by Dr. Crusher's humanism, this encounter seems to firmly support Picard's side of the argument.


THOUGHTS

Who Watches the Watchers is another Season Three episode that legitimately tries to do something interesting. So far, that's one area in which Season Three is standing above the first two seasons: Not all of the episodes work, but all of them are genuinely trying. No Outrageous Okanas here.

I'm afraid that, despite good intentions, this episode ends up being a "near miss" for me. The scenes involving Picard and Nuria are interesting and well-acted by seasoned professionals Patrick Stewart and Kathryn Leigh Scott. I also enjoyed Picard's confrontation with Liko. But, like a lot of these "Prime Directive" episodes, I just never fully bought into the scenario.

I could not for an instant believe the central premise, as stated by Dr. Barron, that a tiny incident in one small village represents irretrievable cultural contamination of an entire planet. Even if this one village decides to believe absolutely in "The Picard" - and the obligatory wise old man seems to have his doubts, at least - it is far from inevitable that one small village's beliefs will become a religion that will sweep the planet.

I commend this season in that, so far, it's had no episodes that seem to be there only to pad out the episode order. But while Who Watches the Watchers isn't bad, it isn't particularly good. It's acceptable time filler with a few good scenes and performances, but it falls decidedly short of its own ambitions.


Overall Rating: 5/10


Previous Episode: The Survivors
Next Episode: The Bonding


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2-15. Pen Pals

THE PLOT

The Enterprise is investigating a mystery in the Selcundi Drema Sector. All the planetary systems in that region of space are undergoing bizarre geological upheavals, leaving the planets burned out husks. While investigating, Data receives a transmission: "Is there anybody out there?" He responds - and soon discovers that the girl on the other end of his communications lives on a planet that is just beginning to experience the same world-ending upheaval. But how can the Enterprise intervene without violating the Prime Directive?

Meanwhile, Riker decides it is time to further Wesley's education by giving him a leadership responsibility. He assigns Wesley to head up the team investigating the geological disturbances. Wesley is excited at the prospect. But he soon has trouble maintaining his authority in the face of the older, more experienced members of his team.


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: The episode opens with a lovely character scene for Picard, as he takes some down time to go to the holodeck and ride a horse. He confides in Troi that he finds riding to be relaxing. He's "not looking to anthropomorphize" the animal. He just finds the company of a horse relaxing to him. He also responds well to Troi's observation that, by creating a horse on the holodeck, they have essentially made true the old legend about the winds being gathered to create the animal. I love the look of weariness and annoyance on Picard's face when his playtime is interrupted by duty, just one second before he would have mounted the animal.

Riker: Jonathan Frakes beautifully mirrors that weary/annoyed look when Wesley interrupts his carousing for some command advice. He does give sound advice, both to Wesley and to Picard, and he does it in a particularly well-judged way. The writers seem to have abandoned "poor-man's-Kirk" Riker and have instead developed a character who is very effective at listening to others, and giving them the support they need to make the correct decision - whether that support ends up requiring him to simply ask a few questions about how Picard would handle the same situation, or whether it requires him to play devil's advocate. This Riker is a far more interesting character than the bland "action man" of the series' earliest episodes.

Data: After he makes contact with Sarjenka (Nikki Cox), Data clearly becomes attached.  He demonstrates concern for her at every turn. He does not forget his duty, however. When it becomes clear that her world is in trouble, he goes to Picard immediately and offers no excuses for blurring the lines of protocol. He does not actually act against Picard's orders at any point, though his actions late in the episode do push the line of those orders severely. When Picard orders him to sever all communications, he is prepared to go through with that order - though he clearly lingers with the channel open just long enough to allow Sarjenka to become "human" for Picard and the command crew.

Wesley: A rare, Wesley-heavy episode in which Wesley is not annoying. Given his first command, Wesley acts as you would expect someone his age to react. He is nervous, and has problems with his self-confidence. At first, the episode seems to be going along a route in which Ensign Davies (Nicholas Cascone) is going to be bullying Wesley into a power struggle. Thankfully, the episode doesn't go in that direction. Davies is simply doing his part to provide his opinion to Wesley. When Wesley finally gets over his nervousness and gives a direct order, it is followed without hesitation.


THOUGHTS

It's instantly apparent that this will be a much better episode than the last one. There's something about the teaser that displays a real confidence in both the writer's own storytelling ability and the actors to play character moments that don't simply exposit character traits. The script is by Melinda Snodgrass, whose previous outing was The Measure of a Man. This isn't the outstanding episode that one was... but it's still a good one, and Snodgrass' name is looking like the one to hope to see on an episode's front credits.

As with Measure of a Man, she really does capture these characters. She seems to be as tuned into the distinctive voice of each Next Generation character in much the way D. C. Fontana was tuned into the voices of the TOS characters. After Measure of a Man, it's no surprise that she does so well with Riker and Data. But she also writes the best character episode for Wesley since Coming of Age, managing to make him work as a character where many other writers have failed.

The plot is reasonably engaging, though I find it difficult to get too wrapped up in "Prime Directive" dilemmas. After all, the rules of the Prime Directive seem to change with each new episode. Here, it's indicated that saving the planet using Wesley's torpedoes is a gray area, even though the planet can be saved without alerting the populace to their presence. If that's actually a violation of the Prime Directive, then I guess the TOS Enterprise had no excuse for diverting that asteroid in The Paradise Syndrome. Still, it gives the characters something to struggle against, and helps to make it feel like something is at stake for the characters, particularly Data.

If Data's actions did violate regulations - and I would say that his actions near the end probably went at least one step over the line - then it seems odd to me that there are no consequences. I would have preferred the final scene between Picard and Data to have been just as compassionate, but with Picard assigning some form of official reprimand. Data's actions may have been morally right, but the episode never questions that he breaks protocol in executing them.  Still, it's a solid episode, one which passes 45 minutes quite pleasantly.


Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: The Icarus Factor
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1-22. Symbiosis

THE PLOT

The Enterprise is on-hand to witness and collect data as a sun undergoes magnetic changes, emitting flares. As they begin collecting their data, they receive a distress signal from inside the planetary system.

A freighter is losing its orbit. The Enterprise tractor beam is unable to lock on, because of interference from the flares. With few options left, Picard orders the ship's crew beamed onto Enterprise. But the crew beams over its cargo before beaming over themselves. The reason becomes clear: The cargo is medicine, desperately needed by the Omarans to treat a space plague that has been devastating them for the past 200 years. The Brekkians insist that the medicine does not belong to the Omarans. After all, the goods they were using to buy the medicine burned up with the shuttle.

The Prime Directive means that Picard cannot interfere. Then Dr. Crusher makes a horrifying discovery about the nature of both the plague and the medicine...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Picard is left to walk a tightrope between the morals of the situation and the demands of the Prime Directive. He is sympathetic to the Omarans early on, negotiating with the Brekkians for at least a single dose of the medicine for the two Omarans' immediate needs. Once he discovers the true nature of the medicine, he stops being sympathetic to either side. He insists on following the Prime Directive absolutely. Apparently, one race acting as a parasite on another race requires absolute adherence to the Prime Directive in the way that, say, the son of the pretty redheaded doctor being put on trial for walking on grass does not. In any event, Patrick Stewart delivers an excellent performance, acting on a level far above that of the material he is working with.

Riker: "I've never seen anything like this before. The violence of those eruptions is awesome." Said in the same tone of voice, with the same inflections, one might use to observe that, "Fred is walking to the store today." Riker has little to do in this episode, and Jonathan Frakes doesn't even bother to go onstage to deliver his lines. Unfortunately, Frakes' nonacting in this episode is more or less echoed by every member of the cast, leaving Patrick Stewart to carry this show alone.

Dr. Crusher: On the opposite extreme of nonacting is overacting, which is the extreme Gates McFadden opts for. Dr. Crusher is Morally Outraged with a capital "More."  Every line is shrill and trembling with indignation at the evil of the Brekkians. Needless to say, it gets very old, very fast.


SHUT UP, WESLEY!

"Why do people become dependent on drugs?" Wesley asks, prompting Tasha to deliver a Drugs For Dummies 101 lecture to him. "I guess I just don't understand," he says, with a smug, "punch-me-in-the-face-please" grin. The scene passes the Picard Sledgehammer to Tasha for her final full episode.  It's genuinely painful stuff, that is only missing the actors turning to the camera while a graphic whizzes by to spell, "The More You Know" on screen in order to become an official PSA.


THE PICARD SLEDGE-HAMMER

Picard is not content to let Tasha have all the fun, though.  While in the turbo-lift with Dr. Crusher, he halts the lift. Not for the usual reason (though all things considered, when others see him and her coming out of the delayed lift, every member of the crew will draw the obvious conclusion), but to give a speech about how interference with other cultures, even well-intentioned, inevitably results in disaster. Bludgeoned into submission by the power of the sledge-hammer, Dr. Crusher ceases all her whining. Doubtless, she is afraid that even one more word will result in another speech, sapping her will to live.


THOUGHTS

"Drugs are baaad, mm'kay?"

A truly dreadful episode, full of the kind of obvious, tedious preachiness and utter lack of subtelety which Star Trek's detractors seem to believe marks every episode. From about 15 minutes in, it is painfully obvious exactly where this story is heading. And sure enough, that is the exact path it follows, with no surprises or twists or variations at all.

No real conviction, either. The two races are monolithic in the extreme. All Brekkians are drug pushers. There isn't a single person on the planet who has devoted his or her life to anything other than drug refinement and drug sales, and there isn't a single person on the planet who has any kind of a problem with what they are doing. All Omarans are drug addicts, eternally coked out of their minds. Not a single Omaran has done anything over the past 200 years other than toke up, bliss out, and then whine when the withdrawal pains hit. Certainly, no one on Onarra has built up a resistance to the drug, or missed a couple of doses and survived detox.

In short, these are two civilizations that could not possibly exist unless the entire population of each world was smaller than that of a very tiny village.

Some minor interest is created near the end in watching Picard come up with a cold-blooded, but well thought-out solution (which, again, rests on not a single Brekkian having access to a shuttlecraft). These scenes are well-played by Patrick Stewart, the only member of the regular cast who seems to actually be trying. But even the effectiveness of Picard's final judgment is undercut by a simple, yet very logical, question:

Exactly how are our villains going to get back home?

Finally, look fast for Denise Crosby's "goodbye wave" in the background of her last scene of what was her last filmed episode. It may be the cutest breaking of the Fourth Wall you'll ever see, and it's almost worth giving this episode an extra point for that alone.


Rating: 2/10

Previous Episode: The Arsenal of Freedom
Next Episode: Skin of Evil


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1-8. Justice

The Enterprise visits Caligula's home planet, where the loosely-clad locals want to kill Wesley for stepping on some flowers. Where's Tom Servo when you need him?


THE PLOT

The Enterprise visits the home planet of the Edo, a race of models-in-training who seemingly exist solely to have sex with anyone, at the drop of a hat. "Any hat," Tasha observes, not unhappily. Picard decides to evaluate this planet's potential for shore leave. Having heard that it's a planet of loosely-clad, sex-crazed men and women, he naturally decides that Wesley should accompany the Away Team.

As the grown ups are escorted to the Playboy Mansion, Wesley is allowed to run off with some teens to play whatever unspecified game they come up with. Wesley, of course, chokes and blushes, so they end up playing ball instead. Meanwhile, Tasha finally decides to ask one of the locals a useful question, about laws and punishment, and discovers that the punishment for any crime committed within a random "punishment zone" is death: instant, automatic, with no chance of appeal, regardless of how severe or trivial the crime may be.

That's Wesley's cue to get overenthusiastic while trying to catch the ball. He smashes through a very light blockade set up to protect some new plants. Sure enough, he's within the "punishment zone" (now, what were the odds?), and is sentenced to death. And that pesky Prime Directive - along with an orbiting "God" - means that Enterprise can't just beam him out and fly merrily on its way.


CHARACTERS

Picard: Apparently, so overenthusiastic about the idea of sending Wesley down to the Planet of the Pleasure People that he can't even be bothered to have Data or the ship's computers run a quick scan of the planet's laws (information we're explicitly told that Riker and Tasha have returned with) to see if there's anything that, y'know, might be important!?! I'll spare Archer comparisons, because even the reckless Archer wouldn't be this negligent.

Picard's absolute faith in the Prime Directive is shaken by the fact that Wesley is the one threatened... I suspect, more accurately, by it being pretty, red-headed Dr. Crusher's son that is threatened, as I've seen little evidence thus far that Picard actually cares a fig about Wesley. Anyway, he shows his respect for the Prime Directive not only by openly beaming down to a pre-Warp civilization, but by kidnapping one of its citizens, and then promising Dr. Crusher that "no matter the cost," he will not allow the Edo to kill Wesley. All very kind, and likely to get him laid I suppose, but... Wouldn't there be some kind of review of his actions back home? Or would there be universal agreement among the command staff to doctor this particular report?

Riker: Spends the first act behaving like a frat boy, leering at the local girls. Upon hearing about the random "punishment zone," he immediately thinks of Wesley - probably realizing that in any Wesley-centric episode, the annoying one will certainly get into trouble almost instantly. He says something inane about rulebooks that apparently convinces "God" to bend the rules. Me, I suspect "God" was too busy laughing at the parade of inanity to maintain His control over the transporter, and that Picard & co. got lucky in being able to beam up.

Worf: Still no character development, but does get the one genuine laugh of the episode. While Rivan is closely embracing him, with clear, strong interest, he glances over at Riker and concedes, "Nice planet."

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Brenda Bakke is Rivan, the gorgeous Edo female representative. She has no discernible character, but she's scantily clad, she's gorgeous, and she's openly willing to have sex with apparently anyone.  Upon seeing Picard's technological superiority, she kneels in front of him and pronounces him a god. What's not to like? The only reason Kirk wouldn't have settled this conflict in twenty minutes is that it would have taken at least 2/3 of the episode to get him away from all the, ah, distractions.


IT'S TIME FOR... BRATS IN SPAAACE!

Wesley is sent down to the planet to evaluate it as a place for children. With all the naked people openly having sex with anyone and everyone, how could anyone think this isn't the perfect place for children to go play? Presented with a gorgeous, and apparently interested, Edo girl his own age, he stammers, blushes, and chokes so badly that they're probably still performing the Heimlich on him to this very day. Then, while playing ball with Edo girl and two Edo boys, he manages to smash some flowers. His immediate response? Not to apologize, or to offer to help fix any damage, but to say, "I'm all right." Reacts, blank-faced, to the threat of execution. To his credit, he's mostly off-screen after that, but still manages to be vaguely annoying when he comes back at the end of episode.


NOW LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT...

A section I usually reserve for my Enterprise reviews, but this particular episode cries out for it. Doesn't the Prime Directive, as established on other series, apply to any direct contact or interference with pre-warp cultures? Doesn't that mean that they're already violating the Prime Directive by openly beaming down to the surface to copulate with the locals (let alone beaming one of the locals back up to the ship to ID "God" for them)? Admittedly, the rules of the Prime Directive were never all that consistent, even back in TOS, but surely there was a reason Kirk and Spock always dressed up as locals when they beamed down to a pre-Warp planet?

Beyond that, it is made clear that the mode of execution is poison. They retrieve one of the needles, and Code of Honor already made it clear that they could simply allow the execution and then beam Wesley's body up and revive him with the antidote. But then I guess we'd be spared the compelling climax where Dr. Crusher whines that "the law's not fair" and Picard announces that, morally speaking, any law must have exceptions (exceptions to the Prime Directive apparently applying anytime Picard needs to look heroic for the pretty doctor with whom he shares a past. Said exceptions are much less likely to be of aid to Random Redshirt #3).

More logic conundrums: The population of the entire planet keeps itself in check because the punishment for any crime is death... but only if that crime is committed within the single, randomly-assigned punishment zone? Which means that, if there really is just one punishment zone at any given time, that you could be wantonly lawless without fear of reprisal, as long as you're not in the punishment zone (which, I reiterate, is one spot on THE ENTIRE PLANET!). This isn't a recipe for law and order; it's a recipe for anarchy. I'm not Data, so I'm not going to compute the statistical odds of being in the punishment zone at any given time while at the same time committing a crime... However, I think it's fair to say that it's roughly equivalent to me buying a random lottery ticket and hitting the big jackpot.

Also, apparently being over 40, overweight, or physically imperfect are all against the Edo law, given the appearance of everyone we see in this episode.


THOUGHTS

Not much to add to the above. This is a very silly episode, good only to make fun of. It is a bit of an unintentional laugh riot, mind you - all the moreso because of how seriously all the regulars take it.

It also retains the poor pacing of most of the Season One TNG episodes. The writers/producers/Roddenberry (who probably had a hand in this) spend so long enjoying The Porn Planet, it takes a full 20 minutes for the plot to even start! Once it does, and Wesley is under threat, the script has no idea what do next... So we get another 20 minutes of hand-wringing and babbling about the floating plot device the locals call "God" (which could be excised from this episode with no real effect on the overall storyline).  Finally, Picard and Riker simply declare that Wesley is an exception to the rules and they're beaming him out of there. So go stuff it, Edo!

I did love how pissed the Edo policeman looked at not being able to kill Wesley. "C'mon, Baldy! No one ever breaks any laws here! I never get to kill anybody! Please, let me kill him? Not fair!" I also loved Dr. Crusher's reaction to hearing Wesley was facing execution. Faced with the execution of her only son, she does not go into shock or storm with righteous fury.  When "God" thunders, "Return my child," Dr. Crusher does not shout back the same.  Faced with Wesley's execution, she reacts with very mild upset. I've seen people more bothered about bad restaurant service than she is over her son's imminent death!

Ah, well. Bad episode all around, this. Not quite the worst, simply because it's so bad, it almost works as an unintentional self-parody. Still... pretty darn bad. I'm starting to wonder: Did I dream Where No One Has Gone Before?


Rating: 2/10.

Previous Episode: Lonely Among Us
Next Episode: The Battle


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1-4. Code of Honor

THE PLOT

With a space plague devastating a Federation planet (*drink*), Capt. Picard must negotiate with Lutan (Jessie Lawrence Ferguson), the leader of the technologically primitive Ligons. The Ligons are fierce, proud, and dress like tribal Africans. They also have basic transporter technology... which Lutan uses to kidnap Tasha. At first, study of the Ligon culture leads Picard to believe that this is just a show of force, a way for Lutan to demonstrate his courage. But then, instead of returning Tasha, Lutan announces that the Enterprise security chief will become his wife... provided, of course, she survives a fight to the death against Lutan's current wife!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Continues to emphasize diplomacy over force, though as Lutan's behavior becomes less and less reasonable, he cannot help but muse about how easy the situation would be but for the Prime Directive. He does come up with a plan with Dr. Crusher's aid to circumvent Lutan's scheming. Patrick Stewart continues to impress more than the character does, and I find myself thinking that this show was desperately lucky to get Stewart. In the hands of a lesser actor, or even just an actor with less presence, Picard would feel like a dull nonentity.

Tasha: Gets the focus of this episode. She uses holodeck simulations to force herself to "keep improving" her hand-to-hand skills. She is very capable of winning a fight to the death against Lutan's wife, but has no desire to kill - and, indeed, in the final combat, she deliberately passes up multiple chances to kill her. Confesses some physical attraction to Lutan, which doesn't make her any happier about being made his hostage.

Villain of the Week: Lutan dresses like a tribal African, has a culture that seems to be a hybrid of Africa and the Middle East, and schemes to find ways to reconcile his people's strict code of honor with his own best interests. He is instantly intrigued by Tasha, but we soon learn that his interest in her is less sexual than focused on ways in which he can use her to better his own situation.


IT'S TIME FOR... BRATS IN SPAAACE!

A Wesley-light episode, thankfully. The annoying one is allowed to take over a bridge station for much of the episode, however, setting an unfortunate precedent for future episodes.


THOUGHTS

And I thought The Naked Now was bad.

This episode has apparently come under some fire for racism. I don't really believe the episode is guilty of racism, but I can see where it could be interpreted in such a way: the tribal, warrior-like black savages steal a white woman and make her fight to the death, and it's up to our noble, (mostly) white regulars to find a way to save her from either death or becoming a concubine. It does tap into certain unfortunate stereotypes, which is even more unfortunately reinforced by the Ligons' African-themed mode of dress.

That said, care is taken to make all three of the primary Ligon guest characters emerge as individuals. Lutan is not merely a villain, nor does he see himself as a villain. By the standards of his culture, he's quite honorable. He sticks strictly to his code of honor, though he's not above exploiting loopholes in that code to his own advantage. His second-in-command and his wife, both initially portrayed in one-dimensional terms, get a few extra character beats at the end, as well.

Unfortunately, though I don't buy into this being a "racist" episode, it is guilty of something almost as bad for a television series: bad storytelling. The situation feels contrived on the face of it. The hoary old Trek cliche of the space virus with only one vaccine is used to justify not simply beaming Tasha directly back up once she's located, because without that vaccine to dangle over Picard's head, he could have had this situation solved by the halfway mark (if not earlier). Lutan's society is shown to be horribly backward and primitive, thus allowing the episode to invoke the nebulous force of The Prime Directive to keep the Enterprise crew from solving the problem directly. However, this backward, primitive society has access to transporter technology - which seems far more advanced than anything else they have on hand. The explanation for this? Well, they couldn't possibly kidnap Tasha without a transporter, so therefore they have to have one for the story to work. Blah.

This show continues to fare poorly at sustaining any tension. Tasha is kidnapped, is about to be forced to fight to the death. Millions are dying, making it urgent that Picard & company solve this crisis as fast as humanly possible. So what do we do? We cut to a labored, unfunny, 2-minute scene in which Data tells jokes to Geordi. Yes, I know Brent Spiner and Levar Burton need to get paid this week. Still, that's a heck of a way to instantly deflate any and all tension that might accidentally have started building up.

Fight choreography at the climax is quite weak, unfortunately, making me nostalgic for William Shatner's bizarrely gymnastic fighting style of TOS. The setting of the fight - a sort of bizarre mix of a cube and a child's jungle gym - doesn't help. Hardly thrilling stuff, even with the porcupine gauntlets dripping with poison.


Rating: 3/10. Next to early TNG, thus far, early Enterprise is starting to look like a television masterpiece.

Previous Episode: The Naked Now
Next Episode: The Last Outpost


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